Hello, We currently use phoneNumber User identity, and have the Twilio plugin set up to send a verification code as part of the user registration process.
Twilio is about to shut us down - I don’t want to go down a rathole about Twilio, but the new A2P process hasn’t worked for us after 8 months of trying, and they are impossible to work with, so I have to dump the Twilio plugin.
I also don’t want to rewrite the app that does the registration to get rid of the need for a Verification code. So what I’m wondering is if there is some way to use the automatic Backendless email registration flow to deliver a verification code, even though the user is registering using a phone number?
I realize that the email address would not be available in the API call to register the user, but I DO already have the user’s email and phone number in the database before they can register. So I’m hoping I could associate them somehow in the beforeRegister handler. What I’m afraid of is the Backendless user confirmation email process wouldn’t even kick off when using phoneNumber identity, which wouldn’t surprise me, since there would usually be no point.
Thank you
Could you please describe the flow step-by-step how you envision it to work starting from the point where a user registers and provides their phone number?
I am unclear where the email address comes in.
Also, regarding Twilio, is there a problem with the plug-in or there is something in the Twilio side?
Regards,
Mark
Hi Mark,
The problem is Twilio - the plugin works perfectly - Twilio just refuses our messages.
As I was writing the flow, it became clear to me that the verification solution I was hoping for couldn’t possibly work, so once again I have bothered you for something that really doesn’t involve you. I’ll mark this as solved.
For now we are going to bite the bullet and rewrite everything to use email instead of SMS messages. The ultimate solution is to eventually use push notifications, but they’ve only given us until Aug 31 until they shut us off entirely, so it’s email for now.
I’m kind of surprised more of your users haven’t been looking for an alternative to Twilio - but then our use case is pretty different from the norm.
Thank you!
I am sorry you hit a bump with them. I did a quick search and the following service came up:
https://textgrid.com/sms-api/
We can open-source our Twilio plugin code if you would like to see how it can be retrofitted to use an alternative API solution.
Regards,
Mark
I truly appreciate that, but we are in panic mode, and we can probably get email working by tomorrow. When we implement the real solution it will be push notifications. It cuts out the middle man and it’s free!